SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDG’S) IN EDUCATION: A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Abstract

Education contributes essentially towards attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030. In particular, SDG 4 (Quality Education) is aimed at providing all children with a right to go to inclusive, equitable, and quality learning alongside lifelong learning advocacy. This research focuses on how SDGs can find their way into teaching and learning frameworks at different levels of education with a central interest in curriculum design, teacher training, and student engagement. A mixed-methods approach is adopted herein, to gather quantitative data from student and teacher surveys and derive qualitative information from interviews of education policymakers. It assesses the efficacy of SDG-based education and sets out problems such as overloaded curriculum, resource limitation and teacher readiness. The study also looks at best practices on how to incorporate concepts in sustainability in various subjects, where students can find SDG related learning enjoyable, convenient, and effective. Early results indicate that when SDGs are implemented in educators’ work, students are better informed about global challenges and engage in critical thinking, while developing sustainable mindsets. But still the barriers are immense and they include policy gaps, absence of institutional support and inadequate teacher training. An SDG-based education framework should involve interdisciplinary teaching and practical sustainability projects, and should be policy-aligned in order to enable sustainable development within educational settings, according to the conclusions of the study. The research provides suggestions to curriculum designers for the educationists and policymakers to aid process of integrating the SDGs into the contemporary teaching and learning.

Keywords: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SDG 4, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), Curriculum Design, Quality Education, Teacher Training, Lifelong Learning, Policy Implementation, Student Engagement, Sustainability